


After the Storm

by Big_Rock



Category: One Piece
Genre: Ace Lives, Alcoholism, Angst, Gen, M/M, Non-Chronological, Post Marineford AU, Slice of Life, Whitebeard Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 12:03:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3133787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Big_Rock/pseuds/Big_Rock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marco loved Thatch. That much he will never forget. Six months of rum and the disaster of Marineford later, he starts remembering the rest in fits and starts, while stuck on Shanks' ship, waiting for Ace to wake up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the Storm

**Author's Note:**

> Marineford is the event that the time tags are in relation to. All of the 'after' ones are in chronological order and should be in present tense. All of the before ones are out of chronological order, and should hopefully be in past tense.
> 
> Ace lives in this solely because the alternative is too angsty even for me. If you go for that level of angst, though, feel free to imagine that all of the afters are a dream of Marco's that he's about to be woken from.
> 
> I posted this earlier then accidentally deleted it. Sorry if you accidentally read it twice!

**For twenty solid hours after:**

Ace sleeps.

Edward Newgate does not die.

Marco walks between them, the memory of his best friend a grieving ghost beside him. The ship, their home, is burnt to ashes and mixed into the ice. A hundred men and women of theirs are entombed with it.

The sixteen divisions are divided, fury and grief spilling through the air like a vicious fog, and Marco hasn’t got a single word for them to make it better.

**A Week Before:**

“We’ll save him,” Marco told Izo, the rum in his hand drink enough for two, the ghost at his side grinning. “No question. Kid needs to be caught, so we’ll catch him.”

“So easy?” Izo wore his skepticism like a cloak. Marco fought down his rage at Izo questioning him. It was irrational.

Marco drank and smiled; the ghost at his side lost its good humour. “What, you want to let him get strung up and cut apart? Want to see his blood stain Marine boots?” Marco cocked his head, smile dying into a cold, bitter line. “Looking to extend your division into the second?”

Izo punched him, rocking Marco back in his chair, and Marco didn’t feel any of it. A shade of a memory tried to shove them apart, but Izo was already walking away, his back stiff with fury.

Down Marco’s front was the rum, drying sticky and cold on his chest. His office had a collection, a glass bottle graveyard scattered around his feet, over his papers, under his desk. Marco found one that wasn’t quite empty and refilled his glass. The night was still young.

**Three Months Before:**

The mail gull brought him a postcard, Ace’s tidy printing across the back.

_Miss you._

A dozen hesitation marks marred the white under that, but Ace hadn’t bothered with anything more.

There was another, the printing far smaller and a hell of a lot more of it, and it had _Edward Newgate_ written in the address. Marco read it out loud to him, Pops’ eyes not able to focus down that small anymore. The deck at Marco’s side screamed its emptiness, so loud that Marco was deafened.

Marco got _Miss you_ written on the back of a picture of a desert.

He wedged Ace’s postcard into the frame of his mirror, the golden sand and bright blue sky next to the darkened reflection of his bunk, and stared at it. Wondered, idly, if Ace missed him.

Marco closed his eyes, imagined that the two bunks on the left were full, their owners fresh off the night shift, the sound of their breath rasping through the cabin. When he opened his eyes, both the mirror and the postcard were empty. Marco’s breath caught in a sob.

His ghost stood by Marco’s shoulder, laughing like a ship bell in a hurricane, and Marco cried, more alone than he’d ever been.

**One Day After:**

Pops isn’t dead, the nurses say, and their eyes are soft with sympathy, the 'yet' unvoiced. Marco’s had enough sympathy to choke on it, and maybe he’s still choking when Ace’s baby brother comes to him.

Luffy’s got the king’s hat, and Marco knows a portent and sign when he sees it. Luffy has the tact of a brick, the brains of a goldfish, and a shocking excess of charm, but it’s the refreshing lack of pity in Luffy’s eyes that makes Marco like him.

“Is Ace awake?” Luffy pokes him, and it’s the first time since Ace left that anyone’s dared treat him like he wouldn’t break.

Marco catches himself smiling. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?” He tries sounding stern, but Luffy doesn't notice or care.

“I slept.” Bandages covered Ace’s brother from his head down to his toes and he was grey under them, weak-looking. Despite that, nothing but easy good humour shone out of his eyes, and Marco felt grief sing inside him, the ghost at his side dead and gone, unable to enjoy this with him.

“And you’re doing much better now, yoi?” Marco remembers Ace pulling this, the kid being sick as a dog, too tired to stand, and refusing to fall down into sleep. It’d been sweet, the way he’d worried for them. The memory doesn’t hurt, for once.

“Where’s my brother?” Luffy wobbles dangerously, and Marco wonders if he has the sleeping thing like Ace did. Does. Luffy looks about two seconds from going horizontal.

He shouldn’t disturb Ace. He’d looked like shit after they’d gotten away—wrecked. Marco hadn’t wanted to disturb him. Ace needed sleep.

Marco takes a long, hard look at the infirmary door Ace is tucked behind, then does it again when Luffy just keeps staring at him, brow furrowed in confusion.

“Over there...?” Luffy looks, sees the door, and sways unsteadily toward it. Marco follows just in case. Ace would be sad if his brother fell down. Marco is being nice, not prying.

Luffy opens the door like he’s never seen a doorknob in his life, the sound of it dragging nurses out of the woodwork. He ignores their scolding, bursting into Ace’s room like a blast of sunshine.

Marco hovers at the doorway, sees Ace stir. He hesitates longer, taking in the changes six months had wrought, the solemn look that melted into pleasure when Ace recognized Luffy. Ace’s voice cracks as he calls Luffy’s name, and his smile is bright with love.

**A Year, Six Months, and a Week Before:**

The door creaked open, letting in a blast of cold air that had Marco squirming closer to Thatch, trying to steal what heat there was to steal. The Fjords of Seven were the home of Whitey and her crew, and cold enough to freeze piss before it hit the ground.

Dead of winter, and they were there for Whitey’s thirtieth, Pops wanting to give his sweet daughter a new sword, the nice thick sweater he’d knitted for her, and a dozen cases of ice wine. Pops didn’t seem to feel it, but the rest of them were freezing their asses off, and counting down the days until the party was over.

Thatch mumbled, wrapping his leg around Marco’s and nestling his freezing feet against the back of Marco’s knees. Marco put up with it stoically, his teeth chattering just a little.

Finally the door slammed shut, the wind outside howling like a wolf that had lost its pack. Marco peeked over Thatch’s shoulder, braving the chill to see whether it was Izo or Ace coming in. The room was dark, the porthole window covered with canvas to try and keep the cold out, but the sliver of moon that had slunk in made Marco think Ace. Too short to be Izo.

A soft, wheezing sigh that ended in a snort had Thatch startling himself awake, a shiver running through him. “Marco?”

“Nmmm,” Marco hummed, trying to sound asleep. They’d been splitting Marco’s bunk for the warmth, not anything more, but Ace didn’t exactly know that they had something more in the first place.

“Fuck, it’s freezing,” Thatch said, making no attempt at secrecy. Not that it would have worked—they’d been planning to be in separate bunks before Ace got back, but it’d been the closest thing to warm either of them had been since they’d sailed into the damn Fjords. “That you, Ace?”

“I—Thatch?” Fire bloomed, lighting the air enough that Ace’s face was thrown into harsh relief, shadows skittering over the walls like they were alive. “Isn’t that Marco’s bed?” To the credit of his innocence, Ace just sounded confused.

“He’s a bunk thief,” Marco said, propping himself up on his elbow. “You off duty already?” Even in the red cast of his flames, Ace looked pale. “You all right, kid?”

“Um. Yeah.” Ace sat down on the edge of his bed, slowly working off his boots. Flames flickered around his fingers, and Marco realized that the kid was melting off the ice on the laces. “It’s cold,” he said, completely unnecessarily.

Thatch laughed, and after a second, Marco joined him.

Ace grinned, still a little shy, and pried his feet out, socks frozen to the edges of his boots, leaving his toes bare. “Don’t think I’ve ever been this cold.” Flickers of dull red fire licked his toes, and instead of being disturbed Marco was wildly envious.

“It’s midwinter in the Fjords,” Thatch said. “Only Whitey Bay’s crazy enough to stay here, and only Pops is crazy enough to visit. You going to bed?”

Ace nodded, yawning wide enough to crack his jaw. “Tired.”

Thatch looked up at Marco, tilting his head, and Marco sighed. Thatch took it as assent. “You want in?” Thatch patted the mattress invitingly. “More the merrier.”

“Huh?” Ace looked up, startled. In the dim light of Ace’s fire, Marco realized that Ace wasn’t as clueless as he’d thought, because he was definitely thinking—

“Body heat,” Marco said firmly, letting phoenix fire rise off his arms for the light. “You could also just heat the room up to a reasonable temperature, fire-boy.”

“I—the boiler broke.”

“Yeah?” Marco shrugged, confused. It’d broken yesterday, taking out hot water for the baths and, way more importantly, knocking out the radiators that kept the ship warm. Hence Thatch crawling into his bed.

Ace shook his head, pulling off his gloves. They were white with frost, and the fingers under them were slow and clumsy. “The boiler broke. Pipes froze. I just spent six hours welding them back together so that the ship’ll have heat.” He was talking slower than normal, and Marco felt a little guilty when he realized that the kid was genuinely exhausted. “Then I fueled it at full for two hours to re-heat the system.”

“You fixed the heat?” Thatch shot a hand out from under the blankets, testing the radiator by the bed. “Hot damn, it’s getting warm. You’re a god, Ace.”

“If that’s so, I’m a god who can’t heat up the room with fire right now. I’m exhausted.” Ace unbuttoned his coat, hanging it up, then pulled back the blankets on his bed, crawling under them. He left his feet hanging out, flopped face down on what Marco knew had to be freezing cold sheets. “Sorry Marco. Would if I could, but...”

“No, it’s fine. Room will start warming up.” Though it was odd. Ace was...he’d been complaining all week about the cold, shivering next to the radiator whenever he wasn’t working. “You all right, Ace?”

“Tired,” Ace said, and it was the fact that he wasn’t even shivering that got Marco to crawl over Thatch, sliding out of the blankets into the freezing cold room. He startled like a deer when Marco touched his shoulder, weak sparks rising from his skin. “Hey—!”

“You’re ice-cold, kid.” Marco crouched down, testing Ace’s hand and finding icicle fingers, then pressed the back of his hand against Ace’s forehead. There wasn’t even a trace of heat, Marco might as well have been touching the floor. “ _Really_ cold. Come on. Let’s get you warmed up.”

“I’m fine!” Ace protested, pushing him away. “Just tired. Go _away_.”

Marco leaned back, thinking, but it wasn’t like—Ace was very, very cold. It was for his own good. “Thatch?”

“Come on, Ace, your virtue’s safe. Marco just wants you warmer,” Thatch said, and his voice was muffled by all the blankets he’d stolen as soon as Marco’s back was turned. “Then we could strip your bed, too, make a blanket fortress. It’ll be fun!”

“But I’m not even cold,” Ace said, and it was the last hint Marco needed that Ace was _way_ too cold.

“That’s enough,” he said, tugging Ace upright, ignoring the garbled protests. “Come on, time to go to bed.”

“I’m _in_ bed,” Ace pointed out. “Let go!” He squirmed, trying to get away, glaring daggers at Marco for daring to try and help him.

Marco rolled his eyes, grabbing the kid’s belt and hauling him off the sheets. “ _And_ your pants are frozen solid. How’d you manage to get so wet?” Marco started unbuckling Ace’s belt, looking around for the tiger-stripe overnight bag Ace kept his pyjamas in.

“What are you doing?” Ace asked waspishly, his eyes unfocused, and his skin greyishly pale. “I don’t want to—stop it. Marco, _stop_.”

“Thatch, get your lazy ass out of bed and help me,” Marco said, finding Ace’s bag and hooking a foot through the straps to drag it closer. Ace nearly managed to fall back into bed in Marco’s moment of distraction, but Thatch caught him, grabbing Ace around the waist.

“Holy Seas, Ace, you’re freezing.” Thatch gave Marco a concerned frown, hugging Ace to his chest.

“Let me go,” Ace said, making a spirited attempt to break free. “I don’t like this, so _let me go_.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Marco unbuttoned Ace’s frozen pants, then jerked them down around his knees. He caught Ace’s kick on his forearm, the angle too awkward to have any strength behind it, but hard enough to smart. “Ace, for fuck sake, stop fighting!”

“Let me go!” Ace demanded, his voice cracking. “Marco, _stop!”_

The door creaked open, but Marco didn’t look up, too busy trying to get Ace’s bag open. It was tripled knotted for some reason.

“Let go.”

Marco’s mind blurred, forced under by a will greater than his own. Ace twisted, stumbling and falling as soon as Thatch’s grip loosened, and lunged back into his bed, coiling his sheets around himself and curling into a tiny ball.

“What the _fuck_ are you two doing?” Izo asked, and the pressure holding them still popped, leaving Marco’s heart racing.

Marco hesitated, confused by the barely suppressed rage he was hearing, then realized what it must have looked like. “Not like that, Izo. Hell, you know us better than that.” He felt his ears start turning red, some weird combination of embarrassment, anger, and indignation leaving him off-balance.

“He was cold,” Thatch said, but he sounded as dubious at their motivations as Marco felt. It’d seemed like a good idea at the time. “We weren’t—his clothes were wet and frozen, was all.”

Relief passed through Izo’s eyes like a wave, quickly replaced by exasperation. “You two are morons.”

“Er...” Marco was inclined to agree. “Ace?” The blankets were now covering Ace’s head. Also the rest of him. Marco suspected that if Ace was given the opportunity, he’d gladly pretend to be asleep, but Pops had paid that consultant to teach them sensitivity, and Marco knew damn well he was expected to use it. “Okay. All right.”

Izo’s head tilted, his mouth half-open on a question.

“Yep,” Thatch agreed with Marco, and the echo of knowing that they were thinking the exact same thing was comforting.

“Sorry for stripping you,” Marco said.

“It was totally non-sexual,” Thatch promised, picking up Marco’s words almost before he was finished with them.

“You’re pretty much a million years too young for us, yoi,” Marco added, not wanting Ace to think they’d ever go for him. No use in making him uncomfortable.

“Not that you’re unattractive,” Thatch said, watching the lumpy mass of blanket-covered Ace with worried eyes.

“You’re pretty hot in that figurative sense,” Marco agreed, because Thatch was right, they shouldn’t make Ace feel ugly. He was at that delicate stage. It was why he roomed with them rather than in one of the bunkrooms—Pops had worried that he’d be bullied.

Thatch nodded, even though Ace couldn’t see, “Though, I mean, you’re a little girly-looking. Nothing wrong with that. Marco just likes manly men.”

“I what?”

“You do!”

“Morons,” Izo interrupted. “You are morons.”

“That’s unkind,” Thatch protested, trying and failing to get sympathy.

“Please stop,” Ace said. “I didn’t mean to overreact. Just some warning or explanation would have been nice, is all.” He didn’t sound as entertained as Marco might have hoped, but he wasn’t furious or terrified, either. “I’m going to sleep. Let me?”

“Ah...” Marco hesitated, Izo’s stern glare making the prospect of speaking up unappealing. “Wasn’t joking about you being way too cold.”

“You’re like ice,” Thatch said. “It’s not for any weird reason, but you probably should share our bed tonight so you can warm up properly.”

“I’ll be fine.”

Izo sighed. “You mind if I check your temperature, Ace? They may be morons, but it’s not impossible that you have hypothermia. The boiler room was cold enough.”

“Whatever.” Ace dragged his blankets down enough to glare at Marco, like it was his fault. “I feel fine, you know.”

Izo leaned over, pressed the back of his hand to Ace’s forehead, then frowned deeply. “Hell, you are like ice.” Slow and careful, he reached under the blankets, sliding his hand down Ace’s back. “Unfortunately, they’re right. If you’re feeling fine and not shivering at this temperature, then you need to warm up as fast as possible.”

“I’m probably not going to die of it, though. Staying right here,” Ace told him, dragging the blankets over his head.

It’d ended there. Ace had woken them all up at two in the morning, shivering hard enough to almost rattle the ship. Izo had said something, too low for Marco to hear, and Ace had laughed through his chattering teeth and Izo had crawled into Ace’s bed, curling around him like—

Thatch stole an extra inch of blankets, and Marco stopped paying attention to Ace.

**A Day Later:**

Marco stops, pain lancing through his chest. Ace isn’t paying him any attention, too focused on Luffy to even look at him, and Marco...

There’s no one to think with him. No _Thatch_. Marco has to accept that he deserves it on his own, the blow unsoftened by being surrounded by friends, because at this point he’s not sure he has any left. The postcard is wet ashes, any proof that Ace had thought of him gone, their home a wreck at the bottom of Marineford Bay. Marco’s responsible for that.

“Marco?” Izo stops in the hall, looking at him. “Ace is awake?” He peers past Marco, and smiles, sincere and unforced. Marco hasn’t seen him do that since before everything started falling apart, and it breaks his heart to see it now.

“Yeah,” Marco says, and starts walking away. He needs to be somewhere else on this strange ship. Their room doesn’t exist anymore. Marco had been the only one living in it, Ace gone, Thatch dead, and Izo moved out to get away from him, but it leaves him with nowhere to go.

Nothing to drink.

**Five and a Half Months Before:**

Marco couldn’t see worth shit. He laughed, then stopped when no one was there to join him. He was alone.

He tried to be solemn, he did—for Thatch. ThatchThatch _Thatch_ ThatchThatch. But it was so _funny_. Marco kept trying to lean on someone who wasn’t there, and it was like he was falling _all the time_.

The helpless laughter stopped and Marco frowned. He drank, guzzling Pops’ rum like it was water, finishing the bottle. He blinked at it, acid burning his throat as the rum tried to return to the bottle, and he tried to remember how full it had been when he started. Not completely, he hoped, but the memory of starting was blurred.

Trying to count it made him uneasy, and so he stopped. Sleep was coming, riding on the back of the rum, and Marco needed it more than anything. A little bit of peace for his heart, bit of a respite from the falling.

He needed it, Marco told himself, acutely aware of how alone he was, lying in a dead man’s bed, the smell of Thatch so faded that it might only be a memory.

Alcohol bled through his veins, rolling him into a dazed sleep, the closest to dead his promise would let him get.

**Two Days After:**

There are things to organize, and for some stupid reason the crew is still listening to him. Marco distracts himself with that, doing roll calls, contacting the allies and asking who was missing, who was onboard.

There aren’t as many dead and missing as he’d feared, the scattering after Shanks’ arrival mostly bloodless, but entirely disorganized. The Moby Dick's crew had scattered, nowhere to go but their allies’ ships.

Whitey Bay picked up nearly a hundred strays, doubling her crew size, and she needed supplies. Oars Jr. is dead, and his crew was hip-deep in grief but flush with food. Marco reorganizes them, numb to grief, the losses names written on paper, tallies noted in a ledger.

Midway through telling Squard to stop crying like a fucking child, Marco has to lean over the deckrail and retch, stomach and chest rolling upward until he’s puking into the sea. Him throwing up makes Squard cry harder for some stupid reason, sobbing like a broken dial shell. Marco hates him for that.

“Shut up,” Marco suggests, once he’d caught his breath. “If Pops gets better, someone will tell you. If he doesn’t, then he’ll die and someone will tell you that. For right now? You can try to pull your fucking weight, Squard, and share the water your dead would have drunk with Whitey’s ship.”

Squard is pale, and for a moment Marco wonders if he’s going to collapse. In the end, whatever inner strength he has left stiffens Squard’s spine, and he returns to the crew he’d squandered trying to prove his fickle loyalty. He’d lost over half of them.

Means his ship had extra.

Marco spits, trying to clear the taste, and tries to imagine Thatch next to him and echoing his thoughts, saying ‘ _Dick-bag_ ,’ to Squard’s face. The fact that Thatch would be staring at him in horror, not laughing, breaks the fantasy, and Marco casts it aside before it begins to hurt.

There’s a fleet surrounding this ship, almost as large as the one that had come into Marineford. The Moby Dick is gone, though, and the deck under his feet is wrong. Marco doesn’t feel anything, looking out on waves filled with friends as close as family, the holes that his plan had burnt into them invisible at this distance.

He gags, then leans over the side again, bile disgusting in his mouth, and his hands are shaking too badly to hang onto the rail.

“Marco?”

He looks up, sees Shanks, and looks away. “What?”

“A word?” It’s his ship. Pops is being treated by Shanks’ doctor in a hold filled with rum, Ace is tucked into Shanks’ tiny infirmary room, and Marco’s been stealing Shanks’ denden mushi repeatedly for the last...however many hours. Hell if Marco knows.

“What word?” Marco asks, propping himself up on the rail. He’s exhausted, too tired to play politics. Shanks isn’t...he’s an unexpected ally in this. They hadn’t been enemies, Whitebeard and Redhair, but they were never close, either. Marco’s grateful that the little one-armed bastard showed up, but he hates being on another crew’s ship. If Ace and Pops could be moved, then...well, Marco still wouldn’t be able to face the crew.

“In my rooms,” Shanks says, walking away like he knows Marco will follow. Marco does.

**A Year and Six Months Before:**

It’s the last night in the Fjords, and Ace was maybe forgiving them, or maybe just a desperately cold fire logia. Either way, they’d shoved two of the bunks together, and it was all four of them under four bed’s worth of blankets. They were still freezing.

Ace gave off heat like a furnace for all that he complained about the cold, and so he was in the middle, rolled half on top of Izo and fast asleep. Marco had nabbed the spot next to him, wrapped around the kid as casually as he could manage, and Thatch had gotten the unlucky far side, only Ace’s arm and part of his knee to draw heat from.

The ship creaked in the wind, drafts springing out of nowhere. Ace shivered, curling into Izo, but he settled when Izo combed his hair back with his fingers, straightening the untidy mess.

Thatch’s hand found Marco’s, hidden under the blankets. Marco smiled, his face buried in the sheets and pillows, and linked his fingers with Thatch’s. Under their hands, Ace’s ribs rose and fell, steady and slow. Izo rolled his eyes at them, but his knuckles knocked against theirs, a friendly nudge.

**Six Months Before:**

The deck was painted with blood, drying black at the edges, Thatch in the middle, his powder-blue suit soaked through with it.

Marco was below deck, lying very still. A needle in his arm kept him that way. Thatch was dead above him, his blood seeping through cracks and boards, searching for Marco.

Vaguely he was aware of Ace, kneeling on the floor by his bed and watching him, but Marco couldn’t speak. Didn’t want to. Ace was there, but _Thatch was not_.

His heart was trying to crawl out of him through his throat, and Marco knew it was trying to find Thatch, just the same as the blood above was trying to find him.

**Two Days Later:**

“What do you want?” Marco asks, hovering by the door, hoping Shanks will make this quick. The room is a mess, a riot of clothes covering the ground that made Marco believe the rumour that Shanks was colour blind.

Shanks spills into one of the two chairs, knocking an untidy spill of laundry on to the floor. The cloak is his first mate’s, Marco realizes, recognizing the colour. It sends a dull jolt of jealousy through him, to know that Shanks is not alone.

“I want you to sit down.” Shanks’ smile is friendly, but his words are like steel.

Marco sits, and his back starts screaming at him, pain radiating from his toes up through the base of his neck, the half-healed burns in his chest suddenly reminding him that he was supposed to have changed those bandages yesterday.

“Good.” Shanks relaxes the Haki, lets Marco breathe. He’s watching Marco like a hawk studies a mouse, cool and predatory, and it makes him threatening in spite of the acid green apples printed on his pants. “Now tell me, Marco. Where are we taking you?”

“I—” Shanks had Ace’s bounty poster up next to Luffy’s, framed and everything. The older versions are tacked up alongside the framed ones, and fuck, Ace looks so damn young in the earliest ones. His little brother still looks that young. “You’ve got...” Marco shuts up, because that hadn’t been the question.

“Yes.” Shanks glances up, over his shoulder, looks at the posters and grins. It’s sentimental, a softness Marco would have mocked him for if it weren’t for the way he wants to ask if Shanks has an extra of Ace’s first bounty poster, a bare twenty thousand beri. He looked so young in it. “I—well. I have my reasons.”

“Yeah.” Ace had mentioned meeting Shanks once, and he’d never said it was anything major enough to deserve a shrine in Redhair’s bedroom. “Did you—”

“They’re barely more than children,” Shanks cut him off, his eyes sharp and annoyed. “Stop dodging the question. You’ve regrouped your crew, and I’m pleased to offer my ship as transport for Newgate and Ace, but I need to know where we’re going.”

Marco closed his eyes and thought about it. His eyelids felt like sandpaper, dry enough to scrape when he opened them. “Got a limit to how far?” he asked.

“On this side of the Red Line, anywhere between here and Fishman. On the other, sky’s the limit.”

“You know King’s Atoll?” Marco asked. Redhair stared at him, his eyebrow raised, until Marco remembered the crew that’d named the island. “Suppose you would. Can you get us there?”

“Yeah. I’ll let my crew know.” Shanks tilted his head, hair falling in a shiny red line down to the collar of his cape. _Like blood_ , Marco thought, _like fresh red blood_. “Second question—you planning on traumatizing any more of your crew tonight?”

“I—no?” Marco isn’t sure if he’s offended. He thinks he might be. He lost the energy to feel it a while ago.

“Lovely. Why don’t you go see Ace, then?” Shanks isn’t using Haki. The wave of dread from his words is all Marco.

“I’m not sure...he probably doesn’t want to see me. He’s got other people. He’s fine.”

Shanks frowns.

Marco refuses to cave. He’s got more important things to do than visit Ace.

**Two Years Ago:**

Ace’s back was bleeding. Red was working its way through the bandages, ruining the white lines of them.

Marco hovered outside the door, uncertain, not wanting to bother him, but wanting to know. Thatch had gone out with Ace, and the report was muddled—actually all they’d said so far was _It went wrong_ , but Marco had figured that out himself when they’d gone missing for a week.

“Ace?”

“Marco?” Ace answered, looking over his shoulder and wincing like even that hurt. “That you?” They had him propped up on his belly, and from the slowness of his tongue, someone had broken out the good stuff to numb the pain.

“Yeah, it’s me.” He passed the threshold, came closer so Ace wouldn’t have to crane his neck to see him. “How you doing, kid?” Marco touched his shoulder, found the bare skin there hot and dry. Fever, maybe, but logias were strange, so maybe not.

“I’m fine,” Ace said, probably unaware of his lie. He was a terrible liar, got all flustered and embarrassed when he tried. “Whatcha doing?”

“Checking on you,” Marco told him, very aware of his own lie. Thatch was still with the doctors. They’d done Ace first because he’d broken the scabs on his back when he’d climbed onboard, bleeding absolutely everywhere, but Thatch hadn’t been in much better condition.

“Oh. Thatch isn’t here,” Ace said helpfully. “He’s...um. Can’t remember. Safe, I think.” His brow furrowed, eyebrows nearly touching, and he asked, “Thatch is safe, right?”

“Yeah, he’s fine.” There was a bruise covering the entire side of Ace’s face. Marco felt an unwarranted surge of protectiveness, and tamped it down so Ace couldn’t take offense. Careful, Marco tucked Ace’s hair behind his ear, getting the tangles out of his eyes. Sentimental nonsense that he hoped Ace wouldn’t remember once the drugs faded.

Ace’s mouth twitched toward a smile, and he watched Marco’s hand as it pulled away. “Good. Glad he’s safe. Wasn’t...they said they were going to hurt him.”

“He’s safe,” Marco said firmly. Ace was a protective little thing, like a bear with cubs as soon as he got attached to someone. It was cute, but entirely unnecessary when he was doing it with men twice his age. “Can you tell me what happened? It was supposed to be a quick supply run, wasn’t it?”

“Mmmm.” Ace’s eyes drifted closed, and Marco’s not sure, but he thought the red stains are getting wider. “There was...a guy? A crew. They wanted...a log post? Maybe. Definitely directions. Grabbed Thatch at the bar. I fell asleep. Sorry.”

Marco nodded, combing back the stubborn bits of hair that had bounced free from behind Ace’s ear. For good measure, he stroked the rest of it, trying to smooth down the curls. Ace had hair like wire—coarse, thick, and ridiculously shiny. It was impossible to tame. “Then what?”

“Woke up, saw him leaving and I followed. They grabbed me at the door. Don’t know how. I felt really weird after.” Ace nudged his head into Marco’s hand, probably too drugged to realize what he was doing. “Woke up on a ship. They wanted Thatch to tell them where some island was. He wouldn’t.”

Marco’s heart caught in his throat. “Yeah?”

Ace’s chin twitched down in a nod, and he half-opened his eyes, staring through Marco, his gaze vacant. He looked like he was drugged out of his mind, and he probably was. “Must have been important.”

“Did they say the name of it?” Marco asked, because if someone was looking for Argentis, they needed to move the island again.

“I dunno. Thatch knew it. He just wouldn’t tell them. Was it important? The island?”

“Can you remember what they were saying, kid?”

“Something like—Argis. The Argis Door.” The vacant look sharpened, Ace focusing on Marco. “They wanted to know very badly.”

“Okay.” Marco sighed, his heart beating a little faster, his nerves a little sharper. “I have to go.”

“Find Thatch?” Ace asked, and Marco opened his mouth to deny before he heard the bitterness under the question. “He’s fine, I told you.”

“Ace?”

“I thought I was going to die, you know. They hurt me, and Thatch could have stopped it, but he didn’t,” Ace said, and he sounded plaintive, like he wanted something from Marco that he didn’t want to ask for.

Marco tilted his head, trying to figure it out. “Shit happens.”

He saw something crumple in Ace’s eyes, and the coldness that rose in its place. “The island— _it was important?_ ” Raw, untrained Haki blasted from his voice, too unfocused to do anything but make Marco’s ears ring, but _fuck_ it was strong.

“Yeah, it’s important,” Marco answered, his stomach sinking. He’d screwed that up somewhere if Ace was upset enough to have Haki bleeding out of his words. He probably should have done some more hand-patting.

“And that’s it.”

“It’s need-to-know, yoi, and you don’t.” Marco didn’t want to be cruel, but he couldn’t seem to avoid it. “I—I am sorry, Ace, but there isn’t anything I can do here. I need to tell Pops what you’ve told me.”

“Will you come back?” Ace asked.

Marco shrugged. “It could be a while. Do you just want some company? Because I could assign someone to it, if you want.”

“No. I’m fine,” Ace said, his voice gone flat. He closed his eyes, gave a shuddering sigh, and fell asleep.

**Two Days After:**

Marco smells coffee before he wakes up, feels the heat of it against his face. His stomach rolls, nausea hitting him like a brick. “Go _away_ ,” he mutters, pushing the offered mug away from his face.

“Then get out of my chair, Phoenix Man.”

Marco jolts awake, slapping the mug out of Shanks’ hand and spilling it down his chest before he manages to pry open his exhausted eyes. The coffee burns him, too hot, and Marco hisses in annoyance.

“Remind me not to do anything nice for you,” Shanks tells him. “You clearly don’t appreciate it.”

“What the fuck—” Marco sees the laundry, the framed bounty posters on the wall, and remembers where he is. “I fell asleep?”

“You looked tired. Hey, do you know of the Heart Pirates? I’ve got this submarine hailing me, and he’s looking for my Luffy.” Shanks drinks from the cup of coffee, absentmindedly, then sets it down so he can run his fingers through his hair. “I mean, Luffy’s grown up now, can do what he wants, but I saw that captain—he’s got tatts like Doflamingo’s. Luffy’s a good boy, I know he’d never get tied up with that lot.”

“The fuck are you talking about, Shanks?”

“Huh?” Shanks looks away from the bounty poster of Ace’s brother, toward Marco. “Oh, right. Newgate’s awake.”

“He’s—is he all right?” Marco got on his feet and nearly fell, so dizzy that the walls spun around him. “Fuck—”

“Have a drink,” Shanks suggests, handing him a blue bottle of cheap-ass rum. “I’d give you the good stuff, but let’s face it, you’re probably going to puke it up.”

“I don’t need that,” Marco says, glossing over the fact that he really, truly wants it. “Where—”

“You’ve got the shakes. Drink, it’ll make them go.” Shanks pulls the cork out with his teeth and takes a swig from the bottle before he drops it in Marco’s hands. “What? You drink like a fish. You stop and you get the shakes. It’s how it works.”

“How do you know that?” Marco snaps, the bottle cool and tempting in his hands. They are shaking, the rum inside shivering along the glass walls. “Who told you I was—”

“A drunk?” Shanks rolls his eyes at Marco. “Come on, you thought it was a secret? Drink up. Newgate’s not going to stay awake for long.”

Marco bites his tongue to keep from shouting. “I don’t need it.” He swallows a burning shot of it anyway, the taste familiar and reassuring. “Where’s Pops?” His throat tightened. “Is he all right?”

Shanks shrugged, already heading for the door. “Do I look like a doctor? He looks like he got a couple of holes punched through his chest.” Sympathy crosses Shanks face for a second, and he adds, “Old goat’s tough as nails. I’m sure he’s fine.”

**A Year, Eleven Months and Two Weeks Before:**

Marco felt the tension in Thatch and didn’t need to look up to know that Ace was coming toward them. “Relax,” he muttered into his fork, bumping Thatch’s knee with his.

“Huh?” Thatch’s hand knocked into his water glass, nearly tipping it. “Shit.”

“You’re acting like a schoolboy with a crush. _Relax_.”

“I am not—fuck me, Marco, he’s walking this way, what do I do?”

“He’s walking over to eat lunch with us, like he always does, yoi.” Marco raised an eyebrow at Thatch, but the third division commander was far too busy staring at fire-boy to see. “Okay, I was joking about the schoolboy thing, but now I’m not. Stop being creepy, Thatch, he’s looking right at you.”

“Fuck!” Thatch’s head snapped around and his eyes locked on Marco’s. “This is normal, right? I look normal now, right?”

“Uh...” Marco stopped shoveling food into his mouth. “If I wasn’t looking at you, maybe.” Since he was, no. Thatch looked like he was staring into the mouth of hell, which was disconcerting, given that he was looking at Marco.

“What’s wrong? I always talk to you, that’s totally normal, is he still coming our way?”

Marco checked. “Yep.”

“Oh god. What if he wants to talk about it?” Thatch whispered.

It’s not funny, but Marco had trouble not laughing. Thatch was a moron—Ace was fine. Kid was even out of bed now, though still herring-grey under his tan. “Look, I told him it was important. I’m sure he gets it.”

The scrape of Ace’s tray on the table startled both of them. Ace followed it, settling stiffly on the bench next to Marco with a drawn out groan. “I miss morphine,” he said, his face pale against the bright orange of his t-shirt.

Thatch was frozen in some kind of existential crisis, so Marco took over. “Morphine is for wusses. How you doing, kid?”

“Being a wuss, apparently.” Ace swallowed a bread roll mostly whole, then chased it with a wedge of cold butter. “My back hurts, my thumbs continue to be useless, and I think I missed a memo somewhere. Am I not supposed to be eating here, Thatch?”

“Uh—no. It’s fine. You’re good where ever you want to be. Do you want me to leave? I can leave.” Thatch was ripping his roll into pieces the size of single beris, leaving them in a little pyramid, and watching it like the meaning of life was hidden inside the bread somewhere.

“I wouldn’t have sat down next to you if I didn’t want to eat lunch with you. What are you going on about?” Ace asked, and Marco thought maybe the pain was putting him in a bad mood. Kid was usually politer than that.

“Look, I’m so sorry. I am really, really sorry.” Thatch looked up, caught Ace’s eyes, then looked straight back down. “So sorry.”

“Uh. Cool. You going to eat that?” Ace asked, pointing at Thatch’s soup. “Because I didn’t think I wanted any, but it looks pretty good.”

“No, have it, here.” Thatch set it on Ace’s tray, chowder slopping over the edge. “Did you want the biscuits too? They’re good today. Cheese.”

Ace picked the bowl up and drank it straight, not bothering with a spoon. From the bandages, his thumbs couldn’t handle one. “Nah, you can keep your biscuits. Is that ham?”

Thatch passed over the half of his sandwich he hadn’t eaten, and watched Ace devour it. “And, like...Thank you. For—”

“Not talking about it,” Ace interrupted hastily through a mouth filled with sandwich. He swallowed and tried again, “We aren’t talking about it. Okay? Also, I changed my mind and I you’re your biscuits.”

“Sure.” Thatch passed the rest of his lunch over. “You’re feeling all right? Better, I mean.”

“Again, yes. And yes, I am feeling better now that the skin on my back is starting to grow back, thank you.” Ace started on his own lunch, swallowing fish the size of his hand whole. “Though I got to tell you. Thumbs are so much more useful than you think.” He grimaced, thumping a fist on his chest like he was trying to rattle the fish into his stomach.

“Did you want us to chop your food up for you?” Marco asked, eyeing the pile of meat, fish, and rice on Ace’s plate. “Or are you going to swallow all that whole?”

“Hey, this might be the only time this party trick is actually useful,” Ace told him. He looked down at his plate, his throat still working like the fish had gotten caught in it. “Though, if you wanted to, that’d be very appreciated.” He nudged the plate toward Marco, looked up hopefully.

“Yeah, yeah,” Marco said, setting his fork aside, and taking up Ace’s. Thatch’s eyes felt like a physical weight on Marco’s shoulders, but the truth was—well, Marco wasn’t certain why he was doing it. But Ace actually needed his help for once, and Marco didn’t want to miss the opportunity. “You feeling better, brat?”

Ace yawned, then collapsed face-first into the table, his head hitting with an audible thump.

“That never gets less weird.” Thatch’s smile was fond, calm now that Ace had passed out.

Marco nodded his agreement, easing Ace’s plate out from under his elbow. It destabilized Ace, sent him slumping sideways into Marco’s lap, and he woke with a shriek, startling the cafeteria into silence and nearly stopping Marco’s heart.

“Owwwwwww,” Ace whined, his hand planted on Marco’s thigh to hold himself up, tremors working through him. “That _hurts_.”

“Are you okay?” Thatch breathed, and he’d knocked over his water glass, water and ice dripping off the table, spilling chilled drops onto Marco’s thighs. “Fuck, Ace, are you—”

“Fine fine fine fine, I’m fucking fine.” Ace didn’t move, barely breathing, half-collapsed into Marco. “Sooooo fine.” He was tense enough to snap, his fingers digging into Marco’s thigh, and his face had gone pale as milk under his tan.

“Your back’s bleeding,” Izo said from the table behind theirs. “Should probably get that looked at, Ace.”

“After I eat.” Ace forced himself upright, still more bravado than brains in his skull. “I’m starving.”

Marco leaned over, glancing down the length of Ace’s back, taking a look at the bloodstain working through the loose grey of Ace’s shirt. “That’s a lot of blood.”

“I’m eating first.” Ace picked a hunk of beef from his plate with his fingers and stuck it in his mouth, and swallowed it whole.

Marco sighed and tugged the plate back, grabbing his knife and fork to saw the meat into smaller chunks because Ace was going to choke if he kept at it like this. “Fine. But if you collapse into your soup, I’m leaving you in it.”

“What? No, Marco, make Ace go to the infirmary!” Thatch demanded. “He can’t eat if he’s bleeding!”

Ace took a chicken thigh and stuck it in his mouth, and Marco winced at the sound of bone crunching between his teeth. He swallowed, licked his lips, and said, “I told you. I’m fine.”

“Marco!”

“You make him,” Marco said, neatly slicing into a slab of sea king. “You eat a ton of meat, Ace. Have you ever considered cutting back? This isn’t great for your heart.” Least that’s what the nurses said when they nagged Pops. Marco didn’t figure it was all that true.

“I’ll cut back when I’m not hungry,” Ace told him. He stared at the food Marco was cutting up longingly. “Those pieces are probably small enough, you know.”

Marco stabbed a piece of sea king with his fork, then stuck it in Ace’s mouth. Ace chewed, silenced for about three seconds. “If you collapse from blood loss, I reserve the right to mock you for hubris.”

“What’s hubris?” Ace asked, swallowing and opening his mouth for the next bite.

“This is weird. I just want to let you know that.” Thatch grabbed a napkin and started mopping up his spilled water. He’d calmed down, stopped fluttering at Ace like the kid was dying. “And hubris is a kind of cheese.”

“Don’t listen to him, Ace. He’s jealous and stupid.” Marco forked a stray tentacle, shoved it into Ace’s mouth. “Eat, baby bird, eat.”

Ace tilted his head back and gulped it down, then squawked like a begging baby crow. Marco fed him another hunk of meat to hide how cute he found that. Devil fruits were strange things. He hadn’t had an emotional attachment to eggs before he’d eaten the damn thing, either.

Thatch was laughing, and Marco grinned, happy hear it.

**Two Days Later:**

He hears Pops before he reaches the hold, the rumble of his father’s voice echoing through the ship. He sounds different on Shanks’ ship, and Marco’s heart seizes, longing for home.

“Pops?” Marco hesitates, his foot on the threshold. Whitebeard looks ill. Pale, his skin hanging loose off his bones, and they’d doubled the number of tubes going in and out of him. “Are you—I mean....”

“Marco?”

He sees Ace too late to back out, even though he’s suddenly thought of a dozen things he needs do. “Hi,” Marco says, instead of running.

Ace smiles. “Hi.” He’s at Pops’ side, one hand resting over Pops’ giant knuckles, and he’s grown a little taller, maybe an inch. Marco thinks the top of Ace’s head might come up to their—to his nose, now. “I...”

“Hi,” Marco says, then remembers that he already said that. He smiles back. “Got your postcard.”

“Yeah?”

“I—yeah.” With Ace standing there, tense but not afraid, indisputably alive, Marco does not regret the attack on Marineford as much as he should. “You came back.”

“You told me to.”

Pops is suspiciously quiet, his face a study in barely concealed amusement. Marco lets it go.

“I did.”

**Five Months and Three Weeks Ago:**

He was drowning. No water, but Marco couldn’t breathe the air, it was too thick. The hand brushing his hair back isn’t Thatch’s, and the blankets under him smelled like rum and sweat. He’s alone for first time in twenty-seven years, and he’s alone in the bed where Thatch should be.

“Marco?”

He refused to open his eyes. Thatch was buried, Moby Dick was sailing away from him with every passing second, and they hadn’t been made to be apart. To open his eyes...no, Marco didn't dare.

Ace sniffed, trying to hold back his tears, and he wasn’t succeeding, not quite. Marco groped through the darkness, grabbed onto the arm he found. Ace’s hand wrapped around his, desperately tight. “Marco?”

“Ace.” Marco coughed around the rasp in his throat, choking on yesterday's tears.

“I’m so sorry. I would have—I should have figured it out. I’m sorry, Marco,” Ace said, so painfully sincere that Marco’s throat tightened. It’s not Ace’s fault. He’d hadn’t even had the command for a year. Marco should have...the second division had been his, more or less. He should have noticed that Teach was worse than just strange.

Marco pulled, dragging Ace down onto the bed beside him, letting the kid fill Thatch’s spot for just a few seconds. Ace had slept with them, sometimes. It wasn’t strange, except that it wasn’t cold enough for Ace to push aside pride and sneak under their sheets. “Shush,” Marco rasped, refusing to look.

Ace cried silently, his tears dripping through Marco’s shirt, his body shaking with sobs that made no sound. “I’m _so sorry_ ,” he whispered, pressing in tight, shuddering like he had finally found something to be afraid of.

“Don’t be,” Marco said, his tears staining Thatch’s pillow, and no wound had ever hurt this bad. “My fault, Ace, not yours.”

**A Year and Eleven Months Before:**

Marco sighed, sweat cooling on his skin, Thatch’s body warm and solid next to his. They should dress—Marco needed to be back at work ten minutes ago—but neither of them were making any moves toward that.

“Did you see Ace today?” Thatch asked, startling Marco out of his lazy contemplation of the ceiling.

“Eh? He’s on cleaning. Light duty until some little bones in his hand set up or something. I put him to sweeping. Figured that’d be light enough.” Marco yawned, looking over. “Why?”

“I—” Thatch bit his lip, then sighed. “You sure he’s up to that?”

Marco rolled onto his side, grabbing a stray pillow and jamming it between his shoulder and neck. “Why wouldn’t he be? Kid’s strong as an ox.” He resisted the urge to push for answers. Thatch was allowed to have secrets.

“He’s—fuck, strong doesn’t matter when you’re hurt, Marco. He was pretty damn hurt.” Thatch’s arm wrapped around his waist, and it wasn’t that Marco thought he was clinging or anything, but— “I just worry, that’s normal. Don’t look at me like that, it _is_. Seas, I’m not—”

“You got him out, he’s safe.” Marco patted Thatch firmly on the shoulder, thinking about dinner, about the financial records he needed to go through from the last time they’d restocked the kitchen. “Let it go—he has.”

“Me—whoa, no such thing, Marco. He got _me_ out. You said he’d told you what happened!”

“Wait, he did what?” Marco asked, startled. “He passed out the second he hit the deck, Thatch. There’s no way he—well I suppose, but fuck. What the hell were you doing if you didn’t break out?”

Thatch’s hair fought free of the hairspray and gel, flopping down into his eyes. “I was being locked in a cage with no key,” Thatch said. “Ace broke both his thumbs getting out of the seastone, then it was...well, fire logia. He packs one hell of a punch. I don’t get why he’d lie about that.”

“Well fuck. I maybe should have asked him a few more questions.” Marco glanced at the door, back to Thatch, then realized— “He saved _you_? You’re supposed to be the adult, Thatch. He’s not even twenty!”

“The lock was really complicated!” Thatch snapped back.

“Did they not lock him up or something?” Marco asked, making mental notes about never letting Thatch be responsible for Ace ever again.

“They whipped him until there wasn’t anything left on his back, then gave him a saltwater bath. He _cried_.” Thatch frowned, then added, “Ignore that part. I promised him I wouldn’t tell anyone about that. But he decided not to wait on me and he broke himself out. I didn’t figure out what he was doing until after he’d already done it.”

“Well that...”

“Is that what you told Pops?” Thatch asked. “That I saved him?”

**Two Days After:**

Ace wraps his arms around Marco and clings.

Marco hugs him back, because what else is there to do, really? It’d be rude not to.

“Marco—Marco, I missed you,” Ace whispers, painfully sincere. He can’t mean it, much as Marco wants to believe, Ace just can't mean that. Marco's never even been that kind to him.

“Fucking kid,” Marco gasps, realizes that he’s forgotten to breathe, that his throat is tight and his chest hurts.

Ace still fits under his chin, though he’s slouching to make it work, and he’s shivering. His hair smells like old sweat and smoke, and Marco hopes Ace cannot feel the tears he’s leaving in it. He blinks, trying to stop, but it doesn’t help—Ace has him crying over his stupid hide. “You fool,” he says, his voice cracking. “You stupid—”

“Marco,” Pops says, his name a warning, however gentle, and it takes the wind from him, leaves Marco dead in the water.

Ace is stiff, starting to pull away, and it takes Marco too long to think of something actually worth saying. “You got to be more careful, Ace.”

“I—”

“Anything happened to you, it’d kill us,” Marco says. And even though he doesn’t think it matters, he can’t stop himself from adding, “It’d kill _me_.”

**One Year, Ten Months and Two Weeks Before:**

“Well?” Pops asked, leaning back in his favorite chair. The purple velvet had faded to lavender, the fuzz long since worn off the arms. The crew had voted it too ugly for the top deck, and so Pops had dragged it down to his office.

Ace was silent, staring up at him like the bluster had been frightened out of him. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen the chair, so it couldn’t be that. Chair was ugly, though.

Thatch interrupted when the silence went too long, “You don’t have to or anything. I just, well—I thought maybe you’d like to?”

The kid’s lips parted, and he managed a tiny wheezing sound, like a dying mouse. His ears were turning red, and the colour was spreading down to his face, like a vibrant sunrise of blush.

“Ace?” Pops prompted him, and his voice was softer than it got with the rest of them. Gentler than Marco had heard him be in years.

“I—um. I don’t really...” Ace studied the polished floors, his hair swinging down in front of his face, but it didn’t hide his embarrassment. “Haven’t been here all that long, have I? Seems strange.”

“It’s just a tattoo,” Marco said, amused and strangely touched. “Lots of us have them.” Lots of them used the ink to hide their scars, too. Ace hadn’t gone shirtless since he’d left the infirmary, and Marco’d heard from more than one nurse on how that was a crime against humanity.

“I—we thought you could get your back done,” Thatch said, his gaze skating to the side as soon as Ace looked up from the floor. Thatch had asked Pops, still nursing his guilt over Ace having been scarred up for him, but Pops had been more than eager.

“Is it really okay?” Ace asked, and Thatch hadn’t needed to be worried about eye contact—Ace only had eyes for Pops.

“I’d be honoured to have you wear my mark, Ace.”

Marco coughed to cover his laughter, because it was clearly a deep, emotional moment for them. Ace looked like he might cry, and Pops looked so happy that he might too. “Hey, how about one to match yours, Pops?” he suggested, because hell, why not? “The flag, you know?”

No one had Pops’ exact tattoo. It wasn’t taboo or anything, just hadn’t ever...most guys didn’t want to be identical, was all. They were a pirate crew, not the marines. No uniform anything.

“Yes,” Pops said, his voice echoing inside Marco’s head for a second, a careless slip of power. “Good idea, Marco. Do you like that idea, Ace? It’s a good tattoo. Covers plenty of skin, purple is a good colour, no one will ever question whose crew you belong with—”

“Hey!” Marco said. “It was only once, and it happened twenty years ago, Pops. Let it go.”

Ace was blushing so hard that he just might explode. “That...uh. That would be okay. If you were okay with it. You know. If that’s okay.”

“Ace, kitten—”

“Don’t fucking call me kitten.”

Thatch continued like Ace hadn’t interrupted, “I’m no expert, but I _think_ it might be okay.”

“It is okay,” Pops confirmed, tugging out a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbing at the corner of his eye. “Very much so.”

“Okay then.” Ace’s hair threw off a bright red spark, glowing as brightly as his face.

Marco rolled his eyes at Thatch, because they couldn’t be more irrelevant to the scene if they tried. “Wow, look at the time. We’ll go call that tattoo artist in King’s Atoll, shall we?”

Neither Ace nor Pops seemed to notice them leaving, too busy making serious and intent eye contact. Marco figured Ace had about thirty second before Pops hugged the living daylights out of him, and Pops had about forty seconds before Ace latched on to his neck like a baby monkey, and men needed privacy for things like that.

“Thatch, come on.” Marco grabbed his arm and dragged him out of the office, away from the swirling currents of emotional goo. “Let’s grab dinner.”

The door closed behind them, and Marco heard a startled gasp, a solid thump—Pops hadn’t lasted a second once Ace’s dignity was nominally preserved.

“It’s really okay?” Ace asked, his voice ringing clear through the wood, and Marco winced and picked up the pace. There was something wounded about Ace, and it made what he had with Pops utterly raw. From the first day—

**Two and Half Years Ago:**

“Fuck you,” Ace rasped. He was drenched in sweat, hair soaking in it, skin flushed with exertion. “I don’t—just leave me alone!”

Marco stopped laughing, something in Ace’s voice making him uneasy. “Hey, Thatch—”

Pops knelt, going to his knees in front of the punk ass little kid, and Marco hated it, startled fury burning through him. Pops should _never_ kneel, not like—something was wrong—Marco didn’t like it. Marco wove through the crew to get to the front, needing to be closer.

“Marco?” Thatch grabbed his sleeve, but Marco shook him off, his neck prickling like a storm was coming. “Hey, what are you doing?”

“Shh—” Marco hushed him. Pops was going to say something.

“Aren’t you tired?” Pops asked.

Ace shook his head, and a weak flame fluttered about his shoulders, swiftly dying into nothing. Ace gasped, then started panting, sweat trickling down his sides, dripping dark circles on the deck. “No!”

Pops smiled, and there was affection there that Ace didn’t deserve. “I see. And you’re quite certain that you don’t wish to join my crew?”

“I _hate_ you,” Ace spat, and his legs gave out, dropping him to his knees, mirroring Pops. “I hate you!”

“I don’t hate you,” Pops replied, and he smiled. “Life’s too short for hate, isn’t it?”

Ace’s face crumpled, his lip caught between his teeth as he stared up at Pops, and Marco felt the landscape changing. “I—that doesn’t matter.”

“I like you, Ace. This—” Pops waved at the space between them, encompassing Ace’s little feud with him, the months Ace had spent fighting, “—it doesn’t have to matter unless you want it to. You can say yes, and I will be your captain.”

Ace scoffed, then started coughing in deep hacking rasps. He’d pushed himself too far, and the afternoon heat was oppressive. Marco remembered, seeing the coughing die, and the silence that followed, the question Ace had asked him—why they called Whitebeard their father.

“Keep it in mind, Ace,” Pops said. “And go drink something before you dry out.”

The sea beneath them rolled, and Ace held his ground as Pops stood and walked away.

It took him a while to move.

**Six Months Before:**

The deck was painted with blood, drying black at the edges, Thatch in the middle, his powder-blue suit soaked through with it.

Marco was below deck, lying very still. A needle in his arm kept him that way. Thatch was dead above him, his blood seeping through cracks and boards, searching for Marco.

Vaguely he was aware of Ace, kneeling on the floor by his bed and watching him, but Marco couldn’t speak. Didn’t want to. Ace was there, but _Thatch was not_.

His heart was trying to crawl out of him through his throat, and Marco knew it was trying to find Thatch, just the same as the blood above was trying to find him.

**Five Months Ago:**

He woke enough to see moonlight casting a white circle on the floor, stark on the half-full bottle he didn’t remember leaving there. Nothing was moving, and Marco’s head ached—he closed his eyes and searched for sleep.

It took him too long to realize that the warmth at his back was wrong, the arm draped over his side not right. Thatch was dead, and Marco was alone.

Marco lifted the arm, rolled away. The moonlight made Ace look young—even younger than nineteen—sleeping the sleep of the innocent in Marco’s bed. Marco was wearing clothes, mostly. He had pants on, at least, and that meant something. He couldn’t remember anything past dinner last night, moping into his drink before slinking off to raid the stash of good rum in Pops’ office.

The sound of sheets rustling drew his attention to Izo, interrupting the deep breaths Marco was trying to take. He looked up, caught Izo’s eyes and flinched because Izo would _murder_ him for this. “I—”

“Marco, go back to sleep. You need the rest,” Izo whispered, and the concern in his voice was directed at him, not Ace, so Marco must not have done anything awful. Izo’d fuck him up if he had. Drag out the throwing knives and use Marco’s balls for target practice.

He needed to be sure. “I didn’t hurt him?” Marco asked.

“You cried on his shoulder for at least an hour and then fell asleep in his lap. You didn’t do anything improper,” Izo told him, and Marco saw the curve of his smile through the darkness. “Go to sleep. You need it.”

Marco tucked Ace’s hair behind his ear and watched it spring back into place as soon as his fingers left it. “Think I’m still drunk,” Marco said.

“How many times do I have to tell you to get some rest before you listen?”

Marco rolled his eyes, then eased himself back into the sheets. Ace shifted, then settled, still fast asleep. Dizziness swamped him, and his eyelids suddenly felt like anchors. “Izo...I’m sorry, you know.”

“I know.”

**Two Days After:**

“I’m sorry,” Ace says, mumbling it into Marco’s collar because Marco hasn’t let go—might never let him go again. "I shouldn't have gone. You were right. I shouldn't of left."

“Don’t be,” Marco tells him, and he sounds too choked to be himself, all the things he’s been wanting to say to Ace lodged in his throat. “I—don’t be, kid.”

Pops looks at him, yellow eyes still as bright as they’d been when Marco was an idiot fifteen-year-old, fresh to the seas and fucking it all up. Marco is turning fifty this year, and he’s still fucking it all up.

He clears his throat, and finds a scrap of decency in his pocket. “Though for what it’s worth,” Marco says, still meeting Pops’ eyes, thirty years of sun and sea sparkling in his memories. He still wasn’t ready to have it pierce six months of grief. “I’m sorry too.”

**Three Months Ago:**

“He wants to talk to you,” Izo said. His hip was warm against Marco’s stomach, and Marco felt it too well.

“Later,” Marco muttered, finding the edge of Izo’s robe and gripping it. Silk for winter, steel blue for Izo’s grief, it made Marco’s headache retreat. “He firing me, yoi?” he asked, as the thought occurred to him. He almost managed to be upset about it.

“He probably should, you lazy lump. You were supposed to be on duty three hours ago.”

Marco laughed, then moaned as his headache thumped back into the space between his ears. “By the seas, my head hurts.”

“I told him you were sick.” Izo’s hand brushed over his shoulder, then pulled away, folding into his lap with the other. “I _lied_ , Marco. I lied to Pops for you.”

“I didn’t ask you to,” Marco said. Thatch wouldn’t have. Thatch would have kicked him out of bed and made him do his job, hangover and all. Marco’s breath shuddered, and grief sliced into him again, finding new, fresh places to open him up.

Izo took his time answering, and the wait nearly lulled Marco back to sleep. “I love you, you know. You’re my brother, like Thatch was, like Ace is.”

Marco didn’t bite down on his pitiful whimper fast enough for Izo to miss it. Their names hurt him. They’d both make fun of him for that. Call him sentimental, nonsensical, and Marco knew it was true. “Is there anything left in that bottle?”

“Not on your life. Talk to Pops, you moron. He’s hurting too, and you avoiding him isn’t helping.”

“I can’t.”

Izo’s hand ghosted over the ragged stubble covering Marco’s head, unshaven for at least a month. “Why not?”

Marco thought about it, came up with a truth he probably wouldn’t have managed if it hadn’t been for the drink and the pain and the exhaustion. “He’ll make me feel better.”

**Five Months Ago:**

His throat hurt, his eyes ached, and he needed sleep like a fish needed water. The misery was very satisfying, somehow, like feeling it was a love letter to Thatch. It was also pretty stupid if he thought about it too hard, so mostly Marco didn’t.

“Marco?” Ace interrupted his thoughts. He approached carefully, and stood further away than he used to, just out of arm’s reach. People had been doing that, recently. Marco didn’t quite know what to make of it.

“Yeah?” He sounded like he’d been gargling turpentine, his voice croaking like a seagull’s. Marco glanced over, saw the pack, the firm cast to Ace’s jaw. “Oh.”

“I—Will you be all right, Marco?” Ace asked.

He’s literally—not even figuratively, but literally old enough to be Ace’s father. “I’ll struggle on somehow.” It didn’t come out the way he’d thought it, more biting than amused.

“Sorry.”

Ace was too nice to be a damn pirate. “You going to come back?” he asked, misery lodged in his breastbone like a knife. If he’d told Ace once, he’d said it fifty times—he didn’t need or want Ace seeking vengeance for his sake, and Thatch sure as hell couldn’t care anymore.

“I have to go,” Ace said, and he sounded so certain that Marco wanted to shake him.

“You don’t have to do anything,” Marco said, and again it came out biting. “Thatch doesn’t give a fuck if you hunt Teach down. He’s dead.”

“I give a fuck,” Ace eventually said, his voice gone low and rough. “And I know what dead means.” He paused, and then added, “He felt like family, Marco. I don’t...I’ve got my brother, and I’ve got Izo and you, and I had Thatch.”

Marco’s skin prickled, hair rising along his neck as grief rose like fog. “What’s the rest of the crew, chopped snails?”

“They matter too. Of course they do. But...he was special, wasn’t he?” Ace met his eyes for the first time, and finally Marco saw the uncertainty in them.

Marco managed a nod, biting his lip until it went numb. “Yeah, he was special,” he muttered eventually. “But he’d rather you were safe than himself avenged, you know.”

“Marco—”

“If you can’t stay for him, you won’t stay for me. Go, Ace.”

“Marco!” Ace snapped, and he was angry now. “I’m not doing it to—”

“Avenge the blow to your pride? Flail at the cruelty of it all? Assuage your guilt?” Marco suggested when Ace hesitated too long.

“No!”

He’d gone too far. Ace was walking away, hands shoved deep in his pockets. The shadows on deck drifted with the lantern light, and in them, Ace looked as haunted as Marco felt. “Ace—!”

He paused midstep, waiting.

“Come back.” Thatch would have wanted Ace to come home. To stay home. Marco’s heart ached, the missing part of it hurting as freshly as it had when Thatch had— “Promise me that you’ll come back home.”

“I’ll always come home,” Ace called over his shoulder. Marco had said something right—the anger had drained from him. “Long as you promise to still be here, I guess.”

“I can do that,” Marco replied, a faint sense of amusement rising through the fog of grief. Where in the Seas did Ace think Marco would go?

“Then you’ve got my promise.”

It was the last Ace said to him.


End file.
